Pseudowires (“PWs”) are known in the art of computer networking and telecommunications to transport frames in a point-to-point manner. In general, a pseudowire is an emulation of the essential attributes of a telecommunications service over a Packet Switched Network (“PSN”). The service may be Asynchronous Transfer Mode (“ATM”), Transmission Level 1 (“T1”) leased line, Frame Relay, Ethernet, low-rate Time Division Multiplexing (“TDM”), or Synchronous Optical Networking (“SONET”), for example. The PSN can have attributes associated with Multiprotocol Label Switching (“MPLS”), or Layer 2 Tunnel Protocol Version 3 (“L2TPv3”). The required functions of pseudowires include encapsulating service-specific bit streams, cells, or Protocol Data Units (“PDU”) arriving at an ingress port and carrying them across an IP path or MPLS tunnel.
Pseudowires are used in many applications to transport native Layer 2 frames in a point-to-point fashion. One such application utilizes pseudowires to aggregate Layer 3 IP traffic from an access device (e.g., Multiservice Access Node “MSAN”) to a point in the network that instantiates the Layer 3 services. In this manner, a pseudowire transports Layer 2 frames from an access device across a packet switched network to a Layer 3 service instantiation point (e.g., an IP router).